There is also how much you love a job, and how hard you have to work for the money.
While I do put in some long hours sometimes, I don’t work very hard. The guys in my department say that we have the best job in the company. We get paid to stand up and talk about cars for a living.
Now if I leave and take a job at a dealer, I would be a shop foreman or service manager. I would make quite a bit more money, but I would not have a company car, gas and insurance. I would have to put in 10-12 hours every day, and get yelled at by customers.
Or I could get a job as a presenter for new cars. Pay is about twice what I make. I would be away from home for 3 months at a streach. One maybe two weekends home during that time.
Maybe I am stupid, but I think a divorce would not be cost effective.
Retiring now won’t mean you pension is secure. If they default on the pension, it will still get turned over to the fed and you’ll get pennies on the dollar. You just might manage a few years out of Ford’s pension program before that happens.
There are going to be a lot of people very unhappy who had defined benefit pensions.
Actually there is a large lump sum from Volvo that I can take out now and roll into an IRA, plus a small income from Ford. I am doing my planning assuming that the income from Ford will not be there.
Rick,
although I don’t have any good advice for you I wish you the best .
You seem like a straight up kind of guy willing to help when you can and us jokers on the front lines appriciate you.Hopefully the Big 3 will get their shit together and get some customers back.
Did you miss the clue train or what? Rick isn’t in a union. And if the pension fund is gone (as in bankrupt, no money) it’s gone. You can’t squeeze milk from a dead cow.
Good luck to you, Rick. It seems like it might be a very good idea (if you aren’t already, but I suspect you are) to start looking hard elsewhere.
You mean that there was mention in the court decisions (about the United and Delta pension plans) saying that these decisions could not be valid for a company in the auto industry? I would be interested in knowing more about this, I don’t remember reading it in any news articles.
Yes, but would that job earning 50% more money somewhere else have the same benefits (pension etc) that Rick was depending on in his current job?
I feel for you, Rick. My dad went through something like this in the early '90s when the county government decided to reduce its staff. Dad had worked for the county for more than two decades, first as a paramedic and then at a desk job. He and his coworkers were given the option to take early retirement. If they took the deal, they would receive the full amount of their pensions starting at age 55. If they decided to stay, they might not get as much for retirement. Dad took the deal (at age 52) and we struggled for three years until the pension kicked in. His friend gambled on staying and lost his entire pension.
Fortunately, in our case, the retirement deal was guaranteed. I can understand why you’d be pissed to have that offer of early retirement yanked out from under your nose. I’d be pissed, too. I hope this situation works out for you. Please keep us posted.
I suppose it depends on what one would make for income, in this case it seems to be 1.33 years for the OP. 100k of real money now does not even begin to correlate to 1.33 years of income.
100k now in a likely rollover IRA of sorts with tax free growth until retirement
…or…
100k in income over 1.33 years, subtract taxes, subtract living expenses
I’d be mega-pissed at the teaser option your company gave you. I wonder how close your pension balance is in relation to the others on the same list that you’re on. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was shown that those that are getting their early retirement, have the lowest pension balances.
I can understand the sentiment, but… at only 60? The retirement age is generally considered to be 65, at least around here (and my econ professor told us that when we get up there, it’ll increase to 67). 60 seems relatively early to have that position*.
Other than in the “I fucking hate working, I can’t wait until I can stop” sense, obviously.
I’ve only ever seen one VS done right: what they did was announce the program and send everyone details of what they’d get. They then worked from the responses.
Benefits can make a big difference. I stayed where I was because I valued the benefits more than the slight increase in money I could get someplace else.
Well, I understood the OP just fine, and that truly sucks Rick. I understand your fear - currently my pension fund is the subject of a number of class-action lawsuits for mismanagement, fuck-ups galore, etc. They’ve already reduced the amount that I’ve contributed (yes - that’s right - they took MY money and $$ from other contributors) in order to pay off other debts and responsibilities because they mismanaged so badly. Not to invest – to pay off there internal fuckups.
When I quit this job I can either leave my contributions and my employers contributions in the pension fund and receive a pension when I’m 55 or I can take all the $$ out and put it in an IRA. Well, my contributions minus the amount that they stole from me to pay off their outstanding debts. I guess it’s easy to figure out which one I’ll do.
Good luck - I really hope the retirement buy-out happens for you. Nobody needs that sort of stress hanging over them.
Oh, and for the record - You rock! You totally frikin’ ROCK! You are the rockyest of Rockers!!! Thanks again, my poodle. And the answer to your next question is next week, BTW.
Rick, you have my sympathy. Of course you want to take your money and move it somewhere safe before Ford gets to wipe away its pension obligations during bankruptcy. That’s the only sensible decison to make.
Anybody who has worked for a company that goes bankrupt can tell you that they will screw the employees on the way and the government will be right there making sure it’s easy to do. Monsanto screwed tons of current, past and future employees out of pension benes when they went bankrupt and they are still a going concern*.
I hope you get the opportunity to take your money and run.
And for those of you confused about a plan to retire at 60, I pity you. I have no intention of working til I die…I started working at 25 full-time for the state and I’ll be damned if they are getting more thatn 30 years of FT employment out of me. My defined bene pension is not available until I’m 65, but I have a split retirement account; part defined benefit, part defined contribution. My defined contribution is available at 59 and a half. I plan to work FT until 55, have my 30 years in, then try to find part-time employment for 5 more years with an employer in the same pension system. Then I’m out at 60. My husband is already “retired” at 46 due to disability, so I am planning to save extra to continue to support him. He has some money in his defined contribution plan that we’re letting grow because Og only knows if his SSA disability will continue or not. Other than the little bit he has there, I’m it for our financial future.
This has always been my plan. My greatest fear is the accidental death that is going to screw me out of my retirement.
*I have no cite–it’s something I learned at work and I’m not hunting down the info for a pit thread.
I don’t plan to fully retire until I can’t work. I expect to be working full time until about 70, and part time thereafter. Why? Not because of money, but for the social interaction.
I figure I can get social interaction from people who share my interests and get together to pursue said interest; rather than folks who are someplace with me because we need to get paid so we can eat and stuff. I hate working.
However, my dad is on his second FT career after retiring from the state at 57; now he works for FEMA* and as far as I know he’ll work there until he dies or they make him leave. He works for two reasons: to hide from his wife’s need to be around lots of people, and because he can’t afford to retire and still keep her.
*hey, quit throwing things at me. I’m not the one working there!
I may be reading this wrong, but some of you seem to be saying that the money I put in my 401k can be stolen from me by my employer? I work in a small office, and the only pension fund we have is our 401k, to which my employer contributes a small amount every year. But most of the money that goes into the 401k is my own money, deducted from my salary. I don’t see how I could lose that. As I said, perhaps I read some of your posts wrong.
As far as Rick is concerned, I “got” his post. His employer said they needed to reduce their workforce, and offered a buyout package. They got too many takers [sub]which should give them “pause”, I think…[/sub] and then they reneged on the deal. That is wrong. I THINK that his concern is not a 401k, but a company pension, which might disappear if the company goes bankrupt. [sub]Is it really possible that Ford could ever go bankrupt? Gosh…[/sub] And if so, I’d be majorly concerned as well with keeping my job.
With a 401k, when you quit or get fired? You can roll it over into another fund, which would keep it safe…and yours. Isn’t there something like that which you can do with a company pension?
Also, my apologies if I am asking stupid questions. I am not very intelligent about this kind of thing. I DO know that I am going to have to keep working until I am 67 before I can get SS benefits. My sister, who is a CPA and owns a tax service, told me so. If I am disabused of the notion that my 401k is safe, I’ll be frantically calling her to ask what to do about it. I assume she would have already told me if she thought it was a problem, but…this thread is making me nervous.
Your 401 money is safe. My money is in company retirement programs. Due to Ford buying Volvo, I can take my Volvo money out if I leave the company. The Ford money stays.
Well I got the answer today, if anyone cares.
Here is what the company said FUCK YOU! Get back to work!
No more packages will be passed out.
I can still quit, of course, but I will leave a shit pot full of money on the table if I do.
I still can not believe the amateurish way that my company went about this. A bunch of fourth graders picking side for baseball teams look professional by comparison.
And the answer to your next question is next week, BTW.